Our Staff | coastalbird

CONSERVIAN'S STAFF

Margo Zdravkovic
Chief Expedition Officer,
Conservian Director

Founder of Conservian and its Coastal Bird Conservation program Margo Zdravkovic has designed and overseen all field projects since the CBC program's 2003 inception.

Margo's work includes publication of the Wilson's Plover Range-Wide Species Conservation Plan (2013), produced for the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network and Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences. She is currently authoring a U.S. Gulf Coast Beach-Nesting Bird Assessment and Management Guidelines for the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

Margo leads Conservian Bahamas Expedition participants in shorebird surveys, monitoring, and implementation of shorebird protective measures as well as working with Expedition teams on invasive Casuarina pine removal.

Scott Hecker

Shorebird Consultant

Scott Hecker, Conservian board member and co-founder, earned a Master of Science degree in Belize. He serves as environmental and shorebird consultant for organizations including Conservian and the International Conservation Fund of Canada (ICFC).

Scott led Massachusetts Audubon Society’s Piping Plover recovery efforts, resulting in the threatened species'

state population increasing from 126 pairs in 1987 to 530 pairs by 2002. He

subsequently served as Director of National Audubon’s Coastal Bird Conservation program and currently works with ICFC to manage and develop the organization’s shorebird conservation efforts.

Maureen Lilla

CIO/Photographer

Conservian co-founder and CIO, Maureen Lilla also serves as one of Conservian's photographers and writer/editor, documenting expedition trips and designing materials for education and other purposes.

Maureen graduated from Rhode Island School of Design and Brandeis University. As an international airline pilot, she worked on special assignments to develop training for a major airline as well as FAA air traffic control. Beyond Conservian, her current work involves humanistic-centered AI research and development.

Will Mackin

BirdsCaribbean Seabird

Project Lead

Will Mackin, Ph.D studied the vocal behavior of Audubon's Shearwaters as a doctoral student at UNC-Chapel Hill. Since then, he has led efforts to map and protect seabird colonies in the Caribbean, and he has banded thousands of seabirds in the Bahamas. Will is the co-chair of the BirdsCaribbean Seabird Group.

Will and Bahamas seabird project volunteers will focus on locating, counting, and banding colonial seabirds in an effort to understand why these species are disappearing from breeding sites they occupied only a decade ago.

Thomas Wilmers

Restoration &

Conservation Advisor

Recently retired from the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Tom Wilmers is Project Restoration Supervisor, working with invasive plants. He shares his experiences from thirty years’ work with invasive plant species including Australian pine) control in the Florida Keys.

Tom's focuses on advising and assisting with project planning in Conservian efforts to control and eradicate the environmentally intrusive Australian pine.

Project Partners

Grants & Inkind Support

Our conservation work in the Bahamas is made possible through our partnerships with: BirdsCaribbean, Bahamas National Trust, International Conservation Fund of Canada, USFWS/NMBCA, Nuttall Ornithological Society, Bahamas Public Works, LightHawk, Dow AgroSciences, Grand Bahama Nature Tours, Optics for the Tropics, Grand Bahama Port Authority, Bahamas Public Parks & Beaches Authority, Bahamas Environment, Science & Technology Commission, Rand Nature Center, Abaco Friends of the Environment, Treasure Cay Community Center, Royal Bahamas Police Force/Marine Support.